One of the first recorded decision making processes was proposed in the 18th century when Benjamin Franklin suggested a process by which one of two decision alternatives could be selected through listing advantages of the alternatives side by side and canceling out advantages or groups of advantages judged to be equal on both sides. Subsequently many decision processes have been proposed and are in use today. These include popular ones, such as Kepner-Tregoe where criteria for making the decision are listed and the alternatives are assessed (on a scale from 1 to 10) as to how they perform on each of the criteria. The criteria are also weighted on a similar scale and the best alternative is judged to be the highest dot product of the criteria weights and the respective assessments for the alternative against the criteria. Various modifications to this basic process in order to take into account complexities of having multiple decision makers, refining the assessment process through pair-wise comparison, etc., have resulted in many other such decision processes such as Value Management, Analytic Hierarchy Process, and others. There are also several methodologies (such as decision analyses using decision trees and probability methods) aimed at assisting a decision-maker think through the options one has in making a decision and potential outcomes of each option. However ninny of these decision processes are in fact not processes, but only individual tools to compare pre-defined alternatives within a pre-specified problem frame.
In order to create a process which enables multiple decision makers to make strategic decisions in organizationally and technically complex circumstances, the Dialogue Decision Process (DDP) was proposed as a sequence of four steps (framing, alternatives, analysis, connection) and is well described, in literature [Barabba, V. P., Meeting of the Minds, Harvard Business Press, and other sources].
However to date, a short-coming of the process above as well as other processes, is that there has been no way to ensure that it can be applied to any decision regardless of type, complexity or number of decision makers. Furthermore, there has been no software that supports the complete sequence of these steps since each decision tends to be unique. This has resulted in each instantiation of decision processes being tailored to a particular decision. In the case of DDP, this has resulted in the process being a relatively sophisticated tool only used in certain circumstances and only when facilitated by experienced practitioners.
There is therefore a need for a computer-implemented method which may be utilized for implementing DDP in different environments in a universal manner.